Jon Jones always worth watching – whether you like him or not

Glover Teixeira went back to his corner after the fourth round, brushed off the cutman who was trying to keep the chasm over his right eye from swallowing the rest of his face, and mumbled something in the way of an apology to his coaches.

They told him not to, of course. There was still one more round left in his main event title fight against Jon Jones at UFC 172, and apologies weren’t going to knock the champ out and negate his insurmountable lead on the scorecards.

Besides, what did Teixeira have to apologize for? He fought hard. He proved to be a worthy contender. He just wasn’t good enough to beat the greatest 205-pounder in the world – maybe the best fighter in any weight class – and so the best he could do was stand there and take his medicine for five more minutes, as Jones continued to invent new and exciting ways to hurt another human being with the hardened surfaces of his own body.

That’s what you get for your money when you buy a Jones fight. That much is becoming increasingly clear. For weeks the UFC worked to sell this as the fight where Jones would face his toughest test yet, via Teixeira, the “killer” on a 20-fight win streak.

As it turned out, Teixeira was tough, but he was also pretty limited. Even when he landed his right hand, he couldn’t hurt Jones with it. When he wasn’t throwing and landing, he was busy eating elbows and axe kicks, leaning up against the fence as he waited to find out what fresh outrage he’d be walloped by next.

Another odd-angled elbow. A hook to the ribs. A shoulder to the face. A joint-wrenching shoulder crank from the clinch that seemed just plain mean, as if Jones wanted to make sure Teixeira knew that he wasn’t safe anywhere.

It was a masterful performance from the UFC light heavyweight champion, who just happened to be coming off the real toughest test of his career against Alexander Gustafsson in September. You might expect a man in that position to show slightly more aversion to risk, or at least the usual aversion to being punched in the face. Jones displayed neither. Even when Teixeira tagged him with hard right uppercuts in close, where Jones insisted on taking the fight in the later rounds, he treated it like was little more than an annoying, temporary delay to his own attack, which was sure to follow swiftly.

What are you supposed to do about that, if you’re Teixeira? He brought a knife to a tank battle. He had one weapon to use against an opponent who was creating new ones on the spot. The best he could do was stand there and take it, which he did. He had to give people what they really came to see, whether they knew it or not, which was a brilliant fighter at the height of his powers, using his opponent the way a sculptor uses a lump of clay.

That’s something the UFC could learn from. For this fight it tried to sell Jones’ opponent as much if not more than Jones himself. Part of it was that Teixeira was relatively unknown to many fans. Part of it may have been the ongoing struggle of getting fans to connect with a champ who seems to keep telling us he’s one way and then acting the other way.

But then you watch the man fight and you realize it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to like him to appreciate what he does. Maybe you have no business liking him, because what do most of us have in common with a guy like that, a 26-year-old martial arts prodigy who sometimes seems to be as great a mystery to himself as he is to us?

No, you don’t need to like that guy. You don’t even need to understand him. Just getting to watch him, that’s worth the price of admission all by itself. Because who knows what he’ll do next? Who knows how long this show can go on, or how we’ll even know when it’s over?

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